Looking up

Damon LaBarbera

Originally published in North Country Magazine, 1984

Looking Up

It is a beautiful day for bicycling in Arlington National Cemetery. I brake and pull over to the grass where Gerald Holden sunbathes on a brigadier general’s large marble slab. He has a long, thin body which shows a suggestion of every human muscle. His grandfathers may have dug ditches, but this body, lazily drinking light from a flawless sky, has never touched a pickax. Lifting his opaque plastic goggles off his eyes, he greets me, and we begin to chat. Unwisely, I mention the plaster. He sits bolt upright.

“You’re joking,” he says.

“I saw it on the floor."

“Are you positive?”

“I heard the sound when I saw it on your floor.” He ties his shirt around his waist and trots home beside my bicycle, holding on to the seat.

As he trots, he asks endless questions about the fallen plaster. How much, one wonders, can you ask about plaster? For starters, you can ask how big the chunk is. You can also ask how hard it hit the floor, and how much does it weigh, and if you don’t know exactly how much, then about how much. And is it dangerous, and about how dangerous, and what are the odds of it hitting him for Pete’s sake! And can it be fixed and –

And so on. At home Gerald stares at the ceiling where the plaster has fallen. Then with a yardstick he pokes at the spot as if it were a sore tooth which he can’t leave alone. At his feet lies a hand-seized hunk of plaster surrounded by an aura of white dust, and a multitude of plaster pebbles like so many moons.

“The ceiling is water damaged,” he concludes. “The entire thing has got to come down.” He looks at me, wanting something. “It’s an absolute travesty!”

By sounding so emphatic, he is asking me to make a more moderate statement.

“I don’t think so, it’s not that bad.”

“Look!” He gives another poke as if in proof. “I’ve never seen such a dangerous ceiling. I’ll call Larchen now. Where’s his number?”

His eyes plead for contradiction. Again, he wants an assurance that the ceiling is not, after all, so bad. I direct him to the bulletin board where he knows very well the number is posted.

Bert Larchen, our landlord, is not at his office at three, and I hear Gerald leave a message in an uncomfortable tone which makes me suspect that he is talking to an answering machine. Neither is Larchen in at three-thirty, four, four-thirty, five, nor any other half hour intervals. Gerald finally reaches him at home at ten-thirty.

Into my room floats the English accent Gerald acquired without ever having traveled in England. Some people resent it. Larchen is the type. I have spoken with him before in connection with the lease and have always felt him to be bristling with a prejudiced dislike of me. Several times he has clumsily introduced the fact that he too went to college, and I assume he clumsily introduced the fact that he too went to college, and I assume his insecurities about his social class or intelligence. I make no bones about it; I didn’t like Larchen, and I am glad that it is Gerald, not I, who has to tangle with him.

His insecurities aside, Larchen is also extremely unpredictable. He misunderstands colloquialisms and misconstrues casual remarks. I can sense hears turning in his head as he tries to detect possible slights in my words. He wants to know damn well when he’s been insulted. To show he’s no one’s fool he fills his speech with cryptic retaliations. All in all, talking to Larchen is like strolling through a psychic minefield. The charges are randomly planted and it is impossible to predict what particular choice of words, what unfortunate allusion, what inflection of speech will set off an explosion of envy, frustration, hate and violence. Gerald, with his vocabulary and phony British accent, is doing cart wheels on that field.

I hear Gerald’s voice. “The ceiling is a structural ruin. Irreplaceable artwork is endangered.” Gerald has sculpted several misshapen heads, and on the wall are numerous pastel drawings, all self-portraits.

“Please examine it as soon as possible… Two o’clock? Excellent. I’ll expect you at two. Ciao!”

No, no, no. Anything but Ciao!

“Gerald, I would avoid sounding effete with Larchen. You say “Ciao!” to people with woks who read Susan Sontag, not to landlords.”

“Nonsense. He’s liable and he knows it. The only way to deal with him is firmly. I don’t compromise with idiots.”

Gerald arrives home from his job at the Smithsonian the next day at one o’clock, in anticipation, I suspect, of Larchen. “Early?” I ask. He explains that he has things to do. The things he has to do include pacing, smoking, staring at the ceiling, and standing at my door attempting to engage me in the smallest of small talk. I am obliging. I laugh at the stories, ask him about work, and discus recent movies, all the time avoiding the topic of the ceiling and of Larchen, who is not five, now seven, now ten, twenty, thirty minutes late. Gerald finally excuses himself and walks into the kitchen where he can watch the street. Forty-five minutes later I bring back a dirty coffee mug and find Gerald trying to absorb himself in the best literature the kitchen has to offer- a Jehovah’s Witness tract I bought on a lark from two sad Jamaican women. Two hours later Larchen still isn’t here, nor is he at his office.

The next morning, Gerald, after a number of encounters with the answering machine, speaks to Larchen, and makes another appointment for four in the afternoon. He leaves for the museum at eleven, is back at two, and goes through all the anticipatory rituals as yesterday. Mercifully, Larchen arrives a few minutes before four.

He is a cruel looking man, a Greek, with a handlebar moustache and a wrestler’s thick torso and arms- very good for a strangler. His legs, however, betray the dangerous body. They are thin and undersized, tapering into small pigeon-toed feet. He wears a soiled tank top onto which thatches of hair spill from his underarms.

Without greeting Gerald, Larchen tromps toward Gerald’s door where, through a mix-up of signals, they collide. Larchen makes sure to recover first, and enters the room. Ignoring me, he squints at the ceiling, and stuffs a short soggy cigarette into the corner of his mouth. I wonder if it leaks brown down his gullet, and I think of the butts that occassionally stain the toilet.

“Gimme dat broom.” High and whiny, the voice matches his feet.

It is handed to him and without averting his eyes from the ceiling, he takes it, bobbling it gruffly, on purpose, I think, as a comment on Gerald’s practiced grace. He begins poking at the ceiling in the same haphazard, amateurish, way that Gerald had done. After a few diagnostic jabs, he announces, “It’s not going to come down. If there is a fucking air raid by the Russians it’s not going to come down. I didn’t learn this when I was in college either.”

Gerald looks unconvinced, but nods judiciously to show he is listening, considering, all ears.

“How do you know it won’t fall?”

“Look, I have been working ceilings for years.” His diction becomes very precise. “I have been working on ceilings since before I went to college. I was working on them when you were in Little League. And I know this ceiling is perfectly fine.” His palms turn outward, as if he were a schoolboy accused of shoplifting. “Look, you can trust me.”

“I think it is structurally weakened, an absolute hazard.” The British accent is getting stronger. “…and what happens once can happen again.”

Larchen makes a big act of not listening, but his act changes from indifference (scratching his elbows, yawning) to hostility (breathing heavily, snuffing his cigarette).

“There ain’t no court, no building inspector that can make me fix that ceiling.” The schoolboy shows his palms. “Gimme a break! I’m no slumlord. I take care of my buildings. But they aren’t palaces.” His diction becomes precise. His teeth show. “If you want a palace, you’ll just have to spend more than two hundred a month. I wouldn’t live in a dump like this.”

I move from where I have been watching and enter my room. I look out to my window at the array of bird feeders I bought at a discount when I managed Whistle’s Exotic Bird Ship, now a video game arcade. A few tufted titmouses, small dull birds common in this area, hop from perch to perch. A sparrow flutters on a nearby branch, planning its approach. I turn my attention to creative writing in the form of composing my resume. Ten minutes later, I am back observing the humans.

Gerald is feebly playing the ethical philosopher now, averring that Larchen has a moral obligation to fix the ceiling. A matter of one’s duty, you see…

“Look, if you are really scared,” says Larchen, shrugging nonchalantly over the word, lingering a bit, drawing on his cigarette, “if you are really scared that you’re going to get hurt, then I’ll throw some patches up there. Then you won’t be scared anymore. But I’m telling you, it’s not going to fall down! You can trust me.”

“I’m scared.”

Before Larchen leaves, Gerald tries to extract an exact date for the hob. “In a coupla days. I gotta see my schedule.” He leaves.

“You can twutht me, you can twutht me,” imitates Gerald in a high whiny voice. “The theiling is pwufuclty thafe.”

He is standing in my doorway, aping Larchen’s heavy-rumped, pigeon-toed stance. He puffs out his chest. “Presenting the Neville Chamberlain of ceilings, the Peter Principle of plaster, Bert Large-ass!” Whereupon he waddles around the room with his biceps flexed.

“He’s the kind of guy who haunts society,” continues Gerald. “He’s the mechanic who puts oil in our water tanks. He’s the surgeon who performs open heart surgery on our livers. He’s all of them fused into one abstracted Big Mistake.”

“Maybe the Twins could use him.” This little joke sends Gerald into hysterics. Anything I say at this point will have the same effect. I’m not sure he even knows who the Twins are, but it is my first attempt to openly mock Larchen myself, and he appreciates the effort. Gerald is overjoyed, ecstatic, for his troubles are over. He’s going to have his ceiling fixed! And not only that, but he has dealt successfully with the ruffian.

“I told you Eddie. One shouldn’t compromise one’s integrity in dealing with Larchen’s kind.”

He starts anew, “You can twutht me! You can twutht me! I’d rather twutht Pancho Villa. Hey, and did you hear him tell me he went to college? You told me to listen for that line, and I did. He’s like a little mutt who needs to life his leg and assert himself on every tree or fire hydrant. Only then can he scamper away, glad that he’s made his mark and hasn’t been bested.”

I open two beers and carry one to Gerald. He is immediately happy. He can relax. His ceiling is going to be fixed. He is expansive and thoughtful, abstract and idealistic. “What pretty things pretty people worry about. Clothes, status, money- how can we be so blind.” In his expansiveness, he invites me out for dinner- on him.

As we dress, he speaks to me from his room. “Take this ceiling for example. How could I have been so preoccupied with a ceiling? It’s absurd! I suppose that Larchen brings out the worst in me.”

“I suppose.” We leave to paint the town red.

We sit in a diner without saying much, and I notice several times that Gerald is looking over my shoulder, presumably at the more interesting people behind me. Neither of us orders a drink. The waiter has a chip on his shoulder, and we wait twenty minutes for the check. Gerald doesn’t object when I offer to pay my share. These last three days must have been a big drain on him.

He has recovered enough of his energy the next day to completely rearrange his room. Furniture is moved, his self-portraits are switched on the wall, he sweeps the floor, washes his mirror, and straightens the closet. He invites me in for a sip of amoretto, and later that evening has a woman acquaintance over, to whom he points out his ceiling, casually mentioning that it will be fixed in a day or so.

Several days pass, and I retreat to my own worries. Guilt at being jobless motivates me into the usual employment seeking activities. As Saul Bellow says somewhere, to think about money is to think the way the world wants you to think, and I am thinking the way the world wants me to think. I am oblivious to my housemate’s low spirits, until one afternoon Gerald enters my room, flops down into a chair, and asks, “Eddie, what does the phrase ‘a couple of days’ mean?”

I tell him.

“I thought so.” He groans. “Larchen said he’d be here in a couple of days. It’s already been five. The curator will fire me if I keep leaving at noon! What can I do? The plastic is sagging with all the punk music they play upstairs.”

I must have looked skeptical.

“Really, it is!” He almost leaps from his seat. “They blare their punk and the vibrations loosen the plaster! You can see the dust coming down. It’s all over my books. I can write my name on the damn turntable cover. See for yourself!”

“You don’t have to show me. I believe you.”

“They blare their punk and dance the Pogo. I’ve called Larchen a million times. I feel sorry for his wife.”

“I feel sorry for his wife anyway.” Maybe, I wonder, he wants to sleep in my room.

“No, no,” he says, “that’s all right. Thanks… Eddie, do you think I’m overreacting?”

“I don’t think the plaster is going to fall.”

“But look!” He points to his room, “there’s plaster dust over everything. Look!”

“I believe you, I believe you. It’s a big room. Avoid standing under the bad plaster. Keep nagging Larchen. Try city hall too. They enforce the building codes.”

“Ah-h, they’re useless. I’ve checked into it. They take geologic time spans to get anything done.”

He covers his face with his hands. “The ceiling is killing me. Killing me.” The tension drains from his body. He goes limp in the chair. What he says about the plaster dust is true. I have seen it for myself.

During one of my walks around town the next day- half these walks being utterly aimless excursions in service of totally fabricated chores, I stop and talk to a Samuel Boffo, an entirely conventional character who has always had an unexplainable admiration for me. We both attended the same college, and Boffo assumes it natural that we “keep up”. I disagree. On the very day that Gerald moved in, I requested that should a certain blond man come calling, he should say I was out. I was Venezuela or Turkey. I was in Wyoming. I was anywhere this bore and his Porsche could not find me. Gerald found nothing suspect about the request.

Usually Boffo is as outgoing as a puppy dog, but now he seems hostile, almost belligerent. His voice is strained and after a few minutes of conversation, he asks how Talbert is. It sounds like a topic sentence, and I respond to the topic sentence with the usual platitudes.

“How’s his ceiling?” Boffo asks.

How, I ask, does he know about the ceiling.

“I know through the grapevine.”

Quaint phrase, origin in Civil War.

“And I’m glad that I know, because he called to unload the room on me. He said that since you and I had so much in common- like going to college together- he’d be magnanimous and let me have the room.” A worried look comes over his face. “Did you know he was calling me?”

“Certainly not.”

“I didn’t think so.” Relieved. He is a puppy dog again, a big drooling, boring puppy dog. “Anyway, I heard about it from two people. I heard it at lunch from Fred March- Fred’s a Cornell man too, class of ’77, works publicity at the Smithsonian. Know him? No? Well, Fred’s telling me that there’s this weird guy at work, and all he talks about is ceilings. I ask the name. Need I say more? And that’s not all Fred says about our friend.”

Boffo makes a type of obscene gesture. I keep my face consciously devoid of understanding.

“Anyway, I almost fell for the room. But, when I called to say ‘no deal’, that scum became indignant. He said that the ceiling wouldn’t fall if there was an earthquake. Then he had the gall to ask about other places in town for him to rent cheaply. Like I’m going to help him!”

“That’s too bad. It certainly was a rotten thing to do.” If Gerald took off, I would have to pay rent for two people.”

“How do you put up with that whacko? He’s driving my landlord crazy.” I make a noise indicating curiosity. “Yes, he’s my landlord- he can’t even answer his own phone. And this guy’s not bad- not for a landlord. He told me he went to some doodly-squat college and he bought me a pitcher of beer the dive he part owns downtown. His life’s been hard enough without Talbert.” Again I reinforce Boffo with a grunt. “Yeah, his baby brother died. They were having a catch, and Bert threw a baseball over his brother’s head into the street when a truck was coming. Well, that was the end of his brother’s head.” With no particular transition in tone, Boffo leans closer to me, as if I had missed his earlier allusion. “Fred says Talbert’s not quite straight.”

I reply that yes, he can sometimes be an interesting character. Before I take my leave, Boffo asks if I still bird watch.

“Occasionally,” I reply guardedly.

“Well, you know, if you could just explain some of the simple basics to me, then I could go…”

“Wonderful idea,” I say, telling him to drop by anytime, anytime, at Whistle’s Exotic Bird Shop, and I’ll be glad to tell him all about the birds.

Wave goodbye to Samuel Boffo.

I snicker as I walk home. The attempted con of Boffo is pleasingly aesthetic, though I’m happy, of course, that it didn’t actually work. I admire Gerald. Anyone who can earn Boffo’s dislike by the simple exercise of their personal style is fine with me. As for Boffo’s homophobic insinuations about my housemate, they are absurd. Gerald’s sexuality is moot. In the four months I’ve known him, he seems entirely without intimates of either sex.

I hurry as I approach the house because I see Larchen’s truck in the driveway. I walk in and see Gerald helping Larchen carry his ladder. I follow the tail end into Gerald’s room. Bang! Right into Gerald’s prize dressing table. I hear his voice, almost jubilant, “Oh, that old thing! Another scratch won’t matter!” He sees me and greets me as if I had been gone for months. “How are you?” He puts his hand on my back. “Would you like some coffee? Please have some. I brewed it freshly for Bert. For all of us. Pour yourself a cup. I have to help Burt.” He calls into his room, “I’m coming.”

Gerald comes back a few minutes later, effervescent with chatter. “You know something,” he says. Bert really isn’t a bad sort. He’s very bright.” Gerald nods in a significant way. “Very bright. It’s just that he doesn’t come off as an egghead. I know it sounds very cliché, the ‘beneath the rough exterior crap’, but in this case it’s true. You might even call him a latter-day proletarian intellectual.”

“That so?” I may be oblivious to Gerald’s depressions, but his irrational highs gall me. This high in particular. Playing lickspittle to Larchen is treachery. I silently drink my coffee.

I hear Bert talking to Larchen. Would Bert like to listen to music? Any favorites Bert? Wayne Newton? Uh, no… but I’ve got some old album by Gladys Knight and the Pips… Yes, the radio would be better. Tell me if you want it louder Bert.

Does Bert want something to drink? I know it must be hot up there, huh? (A grunt in reply) Well, I’ll just go and get something nice and cold. Gerald comes into the kitchen and prepares a big glass of ice, onto which he pours the coffee, badly strained so that grains sit on top of the cubes. Then he adds a shot of Kahlua, and lots of sugar. A touch of anisette, a pinch of lemon, and all topped with Reddi Whip. He brings the concoction to Larchen. A moment later, I hear a gag and a splutter. “Thanks, kid. Do me a favor and get me a beer.” Gerald brings him one.

From the kitchen, I see Gerald standing deferentially in the doorway to his own room, perfectly diffident and unobtrusive, as if he were a little boy watching the big men strong telephone wire. He certainly doesn’t want to be a busybody. After all, Bert is working. Bert should have his privacy. He wants to show Bert that he trusts him. That he knows Bert’s the boss. That he is not about to tell a craftsman how to go about his craft. Gerald is no kibitzer. For fixing a ceiling is really a kind of art, ain’t it Gerry. And you’re watching, Gerry, because you want to see a true master at work, doing his job. Right, Gerry? Doing it good. I head for my room, brushing past him in the doorway.

When I am feeling this bad, ventilating my emotions in my diary sometimes helps. I open the bottom desk drawer. The hair I placed on my dairy binding has not been disturbed. Last week, I sensed something amiss in this drawer. Now, too sullen to feel guilty about my suspicions, I open to a clean page. Imagine, I write, imagine Gerald’s poor father, cursed with this son, this living embarrassment. Imagine the constant explanations to neighbors and friends. If something like that springs from my loins, I’ll enlist it on its 17^th birthday… A scenario from a non-existent movie: It is raining. The milk truck has climbed a clopping suburban lawn. Under a tartan in the street lie the cold child and his shattered skull. In the background a policeman takes notes, flipping a page. Extras gawk. In the foreground stands a pigeon-toed boy. “Honest mom, it won’t happen again. He outstretches his pinky, as if to bet. “Swear to God!”

I hear Larchen cursing his wobbly ladder. I close my diary and replace the hair. In the kitchen, I position myself so I can watch the happenings in Gerald’s room.

He is still standing in the doorway like a jug-eared boy, arms folded, one toe stepping on the others… still the shy little kid with his hands in his pocket. He trusts Bert and calls, “that’s a good job!” Larchen turns around and gives one of his grunts, then goes back to work. A momentary look of panic crosses Gerald’s face. He shuffles in the doorway. Has he disturbed Bert? Has he clumsily offended Bert? Evidently disconcerted with his own rash words, he retreats into the kitchen. I continue to watch Larchen as he flicks his cigarette ash to the floor, scratches his large rear end, and smells his underarm on the pretext of wiping his brown. It’s like watching a gorilla pick its scabs at the zoo.

Gerald returns from the kitchen spooning plain Dannon yogurt into his mouth, a tactical mistake. Creatures like Larchen are almost always suspicious of this particular food. It looks too much like semen. Sure enough, Larchen, by some instinct, turns around and spots Gerald lifting the white viscous fluid from container to mouth.

“Hey, eatin’ some of my plaster glue here?” Larchen points down the ladder to the bucket of white goop he has been slopping around the edges of sheetrock patches, and steps down the ladder as if to leave. He can’t resist an exit line; and since he isn’t clever enough to think of a line when he is finished with his work, he might as well finish his work when he has a line.

Gerald lets out a huge bellow of laughter, mishandles his spoon, and wipes yogurt on his shirt.

“Plastering glue indeed!” His mouth and eyes are wide with merriment. “But it is like plaster glue, it really is! Did you hear that, Eddie? Bert said my yogurt was like…”

“Plastering glue. Yes I heard. There is a resemblance.” I lift the corners of my mouth in polite imitation of a smile.

By now, the yogurt container is completely inverted, and beads of yogurt dribble down Gerald’s pants. “Don’t go out like that,” says Larchen, “or they’ll think you been playin wid y’self.” Gerald’s mirth redoubles, but is cut short when he realizes Larchen is about to leave.

“Uh, Bert,” he says, quickly straightening, “can’t you just add another patch to that spot in the corner too. I know you’ve gone way beyond the call of duty, but…”

“Sure,” announces Larchen magniloquently. He is smiling. They are friends and what are friends for. Anticipating the conversations I will later have to hear about how Bert is really a fine fellow, I feel nauseous.

“Sure, sure, I’ll throw another patch there. I know what it’s like to want a nice place after you graduate from college. I went to college too.” He climbs the ladder.

“Well, that’s obvious,” says the other.

During the next week, I sink into my own preoccupations, preoccupations which are no less demoralizing for being commonplace. I terminate an enigmatically hostile romance. I wallow in unemployment guilt, and make a sudden elated decision to enter the bond business, and then decide not to. I spend hours drafting a letter to Blue Cross-Blue Shield protesting their refusal to pay a certain doctor’s bill. All mundane cares, but enough to blind me to Gerald’s depression. Saying he is unhappy is euphemistic. His depression is not the flippant or existential type. It is the garden variety, complete with insomnia, tears, weight loss, and his notice from the Smithsonian. But I have no idea of this until one afternoon, he enters my room…

“Remember Larchen was here, Eddie.” The English accent is gone. “Remember how glad I was. I expected that once the patches were up, I’d be free. No more rumination about the million ways plaster could kill me or damage my brain. I could live! But nothing’s changed, Eddie. That plaster is sagging. Patches aren’t enough! Why, they’ve probably weakened the rest of the ceiling so that it’s riskier than ever. You’ve seen those patches. Ugly? They’re God-awful. They’re ragged slabs of glued-on sheetrock. Who ever heard of fixing plaster with glue and sheetrock? I wake in the morning and the first thing I think is “plaster”. He buries his pale, hollow face in his hands. “What is wrong with me?”

“Keep harassing Larchen. You’re unemployed. It has certain benefits. You have more time to devote to the ceiling than he ever will. Make pestering a full time job. Start now. He’s outside fixing a gutter.” I had seen him earlier with his work crew pointing derisively at my birdfeeders.

A few minutes later, Larchen strides into the room, followed by three goons and Gerald who is trying to explain his theory about how the patches have actually weakened the ceiling. The theory is illogical.

Larchen performs his contempt routine. He has developed the ability to convey shades of disgust and loathing which I never even knew existed. First he scowls at the ceiling and then at Gerald, aspirating disdainfully. His head drops to his chest in painful disbelief, as though he has just witnessed a gruesome crime. He leans wearily on the wall with one arm, while the other he alternately wrenches his cigarette from the corner of his mouth, then stuffs it back in. He really has missed his calling. He would have made a great actor in any number of aggrieved roles- the boxer whose career ends because he refuses to throw a fight, the cop who loses his badge when he won’t stop sniffing out graft, any number of “Why Me?” roles. Yes, Larchen lives in an unfair world. Just like the movies. Except that in the movies, the hero triumphs at the end; whereas, Larchen is a born loser.

More Larchen clones clomp into the room. Muscular, tan, and dirty from outdoor work, they all look Greek. They don’t seem particularly friendly, but Gerald greets them with an overblown enthusiasm which is completely out of character for him, and which I attribute either to jitters or the absurd hope that these men might prove useful allies. All ignore his effusiveness, except for one short man who has a vacant, lost air about him. This man gives Gerald a cheerful wave and utters some indecipherably broken English, punctuated by giggles. Uncomfortably, Gerald grins back and laughs at whatever the fellow has just said.

Larchen, angry that the grim atmosphere has been defiled, glowers at Gerald.

“You think I’m a hustler, you think I’m a clown. You think you can snap your fingers and Bert’ll come running and fixing your faucet and changing your light bulb, and wiping up your milk. You don’t need no landlord; you need your mommy’s teat. You’re crazy with this ceiling. I’m telling you, it ain’t gonna come down!”

Gerald’s next line of approach involves reverse psychology. “Look, I will pay for the installation myself. I’ll hire you or someone you recommend to me. It’s only fair.”

No reply. The workers shuffle impatiently.

“As I say, if you do not feel obliged to install a new ceiling- and I trust your professional opinion- then you should allow me to pay for it.”

“….”

“It’s only fair. Why should you exert yourself when the ceiling is perfectly s…”

“Shut up! I’m thinking.”

Gerald defers. I wonder what he will say of Larchen takes him up on the offer. Continuing to “think”, Larchen glares at a spot of air about a foot off the floor. We wait.

I notice that the workers are stifling snickers, and by Gerald’s shrinking look, I can tell he has noticed too. The object of their enjoyment is a life-sized drawing- a nude- done in pastel. From the goatee and peculiar glasses, the intention of the self-portrait is unmistakable. Gerald is no artist, and one could catalogue some abnormality in every body part. There is no forehead, and the neck is a thin pipe. The feet seem webbed, as if borrowed from the Black Lagoon, while the chest is barrel-like and bony, like an old man’s. The worst part is the genital region. By the abraded paper, it is apparent that this area has been worked and reworked. The final result is that Gerald has given himself a penis over a foot long.

The workers, nudging each other, look at the floor and the ceiling to stifle their laughter. Mouths twitch and necks bulge. Gerald pretends not to notice.

The workers induce in me a vague familiar apprehension. As an adolescent, I was taunted by peers for reasons related to my academic success. Fearful, I collaborated in mocking those lower in status than myself. An oddball like Gerald would have represented the lowest rung on any high school social ladder, and I, scarred and only two rungs up, would have helped step on his face. The memory of those bullies- these bullies- frightens and shames me.

Gerald looks at me. He holds his gaze for a moment. I try to communicate something. Beat them Gerry! Win any way you can. I’m with you!

Gerald’s voice quivers. “Bert, it’s very important that I get the ceiling fixed. I’m not… the same as other people.” He covers his face with his hand. “You see… you see I have a plate in my head. I was hit by a truck when I was a kid…” He hands his head as if having great trouble saying this. “And if anything hits me, even a little piece of plaster, I will die.”

Larchen is thunderstruck. The snickering stops. The foreigner who waved gives a compassionate look with big dark Mediterranean eyes. Gerald leans back against a table, as if all the strength had been drained from him, and indeed the lie must have consumed much creative energy. “It’s not something I tell everyone.”

Within an hour, the house is choked with plaster dust as the ceiling is pulled down. I cordon off Gerald’s room with sheets hung strategically in the hallway, but to no avail. Larchen and his crew are no help. They tromp in and out of Gerald’s room without wiping their feet, leaving tracks of fine white dust, as if they were angels. I foresee plaster dust in my record albums, in my camera, an extra ingredient in my food. I ask Larchen if he could wipe his feet, and he treats me as curtly as ever. I retreat to my room.

A shaft of sunlight illuminates a galaxy of plaster dust suspended above my desk. Investigating my diary, I see that the hair is unmoved. How did he know about the accident? Did he replace the hair? I feel superfluous. Wading through Gerald’s furniture, which has been moved to the living room, I leave to take a long walk.

I return home late in the evening feeling calm- calm with the realization that the ceiling crisis is over. In his empty room, Gerald reposes on a bare mattress. He wears shorts and a surgeon’s mask, or rather the kind of surgeon-like mask one associates with cold weather and hypochondriacs. Seeing me, he painfully raises his body, paled a deathly white by the dust, to a sitting position.

“Tired?”

“Those louts kept sending me to the deli for beer. I also carted away the old plaster. You have no idea what a ceiling weighs. Luckily, I couldn’t help rip down the plaster.”

“Your head, doubtless.”

Silently, his body shivers, as if relishing a great inner joy. Then the corresponding sound, suppressed until now, explodes. Bellows of laughter penetrate the still damp plaster overhead, lift beyond the gable of the house, and extend into outer space and out speed comets. Martians are monitoring this crazy earthling’s laughter a million miles away. Suddenly he stops, adjusts the surgeon’s mask, and looks upward.

“The best ceiling in Arlington… that’s what Bert says.” He nods his head approvingly as he scans the ceiling. “It really makes the room, don’t you think?”

I say nothing. There is a silence. Then he winks at me conspiratorially. “A plate in my head! Can you imagine! Don’t I have a genius for subterfuge? It’s a real gift…”

I gamble. I ask which branch of the service he’d like best.

“I’ll vacuum later of course. Take this for now.” He dangles a mask in front of me. His face is red and wet as a squashed tomato. “Come on, take it- don’t risk your lungs.”

I politely decline. I prefer to live dangerously.

He shakes the mask again. “Take it. It works.” Then he adds without much conviction, “You can trust me.”

His eyes turn away from me and fall upon the self-portrait, brightening. Then they close and Gerald begins what I hope is a long, quiet, and blissful convalescence.